-
African health sciences · Dec 2016
Concurrent use of Antiretroviral and African traditional medicines amongst people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWA) in the eThekwini Metropolitan area of KwaZulu Natal.
- Sibanda Mncengeli, Nlooto M Manimbulu, and Naidoo Panjasaram.
- Discipline of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal (Westville Campus), Private Bag X54001, Durban 4000. South Africa.
- Afr Health Sci. 2016 Dec 1; 16 (4): 111811301118-1130.
BackgroundPeople living with HIV/AIDS (PLWA) often use African Traditional Medicines (ATM) either alone or in combination with Western medicines including Antiretrovirals (ARV).ObjectivesTo explore the prevalence of concurrent Antiretrovirals (ARV) and African Traditional medicines (ATM) use and determine the effects of any concurrent use on the CD4+ Lymphocyte count and Viral Load (VL) of PLWA in the eThekwini Metropolitan area.MethodsA descriptive and exploratory study was carried out on 360 patients. Information was gathered on patients socioeconomic characteristics, ATM usage, outcome measures of HIV disease progression (CD4+ Count, VL). The data was analysed using descriptive statistics, univariate and multivariate analyses.Results4.98% (14/281) of the patients used ATM and ARV concurrently during the study period. Over 65% (185/281) reported ATM use before diagnosis with HIV whilst 77.6% (218/281) reported previous ATM use after their HIV diagnosis but before initiation with ARV. Place of residence (p=0.004), age (p<0.001) and education level (P=0.041) were found to be significantly and positively correlated with ATM use. There were no statistically significant changes in mean plasma CD4+ Count and inconclusive effects on VL during the period of the study in the group taking ARV alone when compared with the group using ARV and ATM concomitantly.ConclusionConcurrent ARV and ATM use is quite low (4.98%) when compared to ATM use before HIV diagnosis and after HIV diagnosis but before initiation with ARV. This may point to efficient pre-counselling efforts before ARV initiation by health care professionals. This study also demonstrated that there were no significant differences in the CD4+ and inconclusive effects on VL, between patients taking both ARV and ATM concomitantly and those using ARV alone.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.